BSE crisis leads to 44,000 job loss

The crisis over bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) will have led to the loss of more than 44,000 jobs in England by the end of the year, according to research by Reading University.

There were just under 1,500 job losses in farming resulting from the BSE crisis, according to a paper in the journal Geoforum.

The reverberations of the crisis have also hit dependent industries like meat and milk processors, feed producers and machinery manufacturers. The meat industry accounted for more than 20,000 of the lost jobs.